


bury my body down by the highway side

by lady_laverty



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Human Experimentation, Memory Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2156325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_laverty/pseuds/lady_laverty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s nothing until there’s everything.</p>
<p>
  <em>Follow follow follow follow—</em>
</p>
<p>The pain is white hot and blinding. It pulses and pulses, echoing and frothing.</p>
<p>
  <em>Follow.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	bury my body down by the highway side

There's a man with no face.  
Just a blurred out portrait,  
In a photo frame,  
I'm losing again, I'm losing my friend,  
He's face down on the pavement.  
 _Smoke_ , Daughter

 

 

He’s nothing until there’s everything.

_Follow follow follow follow—_

The pain is white hot and blinding. It pulses and pulses, echoing and frothing.

_Follow._

 

\---

 

_“Are we doing the right thing? Are no better than Hydra?”_

_“We’re giving him a second chance, Simmons.”_

_“But at what cost?”_

 

\---

 

Blink. Blink. Faces flowing and swirling around and around.

“Ward?”

Blink. Blink.

“ _Ward?_ ”

Blink. Blink. Twitch of the fingers, _follow orders_.

“Focus on me, Ward.”

Eyes focus and a face appears.

“Welcome back, Ward. Time to get to work.”

There’s nothing there. Nothing in his mind. A fractured patchwork of orders, just given and vivid, bleeding and bare.

“Sit up for me.” He does. “Flex your fingers and arms.” He does. “Throw this knife into that target.” He does.

“Who are you loyal to?”

“Director Philip Coulson.”

Someone is crying but he doesn’t think it is him. Who is it? It sounds familiar.

“Who is John Garrett?”

“I don’t know.”

He stares flatly into blue eyes and remembers _nothing_.

 

\---

 

_“How could you do this, AC? How could you?”_

_“It was this or be executed, Skye. What would you have had me do?”_

_“At least if he was executed_ it _wouldn’t be walking around pretending to be a real boy!”_

 

\---

 

They give him a room. It has patterns all wrought in metal. He runs calloused and scarred fingers over them. The door clicks and groans. There is a bed, low to the ground, that he can call his own.

He was told to perform exercises to keep in peak physical condition, so he does.

He sits. He recites phrases in languages that he doesn’t understand how he knows.

He’s still and there is something crucial missing, something wrong wrong _wrong—_

 

\---

 

The Director sits at the table in front of him, and stares, hands clasped and eyebrows raised. An Asian woman stands in the corner, with a hand lingering close to a weapon. He doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t understand much. Not the way the Doctor makes jokes and stares expectantly at him, expecting an answer. Sometimes, when he goes to have his treatments she looks sad.

Why does she look sad?

He should ask but that is against orders.

Sometimes she slaps him when she doesn’t get the answer she’s looking for, eyes bright with hate and anger. He sits and takes it because he doesn’t know what else to do.

_“He’s still in a coma because of you_ ,” she hisses. He stares dully. “ _I wish you were dead!_ ”

Sometimes he wishes he was, as well.

“Ward, what are you thinking?” The Director asks him.

He stares dully back, without emotion or answers for him.

The Director sighs and rubs his forehead, lines creasing and moving as he does so.

“I’m sorry, if you’re in there Grant. Please know I’m sorry. There was no other way.”

_Follow orders follow orders follow orders._

Grant, Grant, Grant, _help me._

 

\---

 

He’s screaming and thrashing.

Grant _, help me._

Grant, _help me._

_Help me,_ Grant.

Hands grab his body and _no no no no no—_

_Ward, you’re our friend—_

He smashes a hand against his own head to quiet the voices that hiss and writhe in his own head. He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand and there is fluid running down his face and his eyes burn. What is he? What is he?

_“Grant Douglas means Great Protector and that’s what you are. Our great protector.”_ A sad smile plays on repeat inside his head, cracking and breaking everything in its path. Hands grab and bite and drag. He doesn’t protest. He doesn’t know how. His order is not to go against orders.

Orders orders orders.

_Please help me_ , a boy cries somewhere deep and dark, almost gone in murky dark water.

He thinks it might be him.

 

\---

 

They lock him up and he sleeps, on his own bunk, nightmares laughing and hissing in his head but he’s too tired to wake and ask questions about them. He’s too tired. What is he? Is he a monster? He thinks he might be. There’s familiarity to that word when it whispers through his mind one night. There’s a banging in his head and it won’t stop. He thinks there might be a lock in his mind, too, like in his room. But where is the key? What is the password? He doesn’t know. He can’t bring himself to care at all.

The door whines and light streams through it. He sits up. Time for a mission. He must get ready. He turns and—

It’s her. The girl that’s so familiar that it hurts somewhere in his chest and he remembers the first time he went to the Director because he thought there might be something faulty in him. Something not working right that needed to be fixed. The Director just stared at him sadly and ushered him out of the tiny office with its tiny plane and he got nowhere at all with his mission to find out what the feeling in his chest was.

He hopes he’s not too defective. At least he has somewhere to stay, if he stays here. If he’s too defective they’ll send him back to the scientists for a better treatment and he might not come back at all.

Brown eyes stare and his own stare dully back.

“Time for a mission, _asset_ ,” The girl spits and he nods and begins to gather himself to get up but walks closer to him and pushes him back against the wall of his bunk. He doesn’t understand.

“Time to show me if you’re a real boy,” the girl reaches behind her and pulls out a knife. She twists it in her hands with expert ease that sends something cold and shivering into his abdomen.

He doesn’t understand. He’s supposed to be going on missions against Hydra ( _do you know what Hydra is?_ no no no no) but this isn’t Hydra. Maybe the girl is Hydra? But Director Coulson wouldn’t allow traitors and enemies on his plane. Would he? Maybe the Director is defective too. Maybe they’re all defective. Is this girl defective?

“Hands out, I want to see them at all times, _now_.”

He responds dutifully but doesn’t understand.

“Now cut yourself.”

He takes the knife and does so,

There’s something dead inside of him and it needs to be exorcised from him.

The girl stares at him, something unreadable on her face, with big doe eyes and he stares back with dead eyes.

_Follow orders._

 

\---

 

Do. Don’t. Do. Don’t.

Two little words cause so much distress to him.

They tell him what Skye, the girl, made him do was wrong.

Does that make him wrong?

He asks the question, finally, after so long.

_Sir, what am I?_

The Director stares and he is vibrating and thrumming with pent up energy, excited for the answer that he has been waiting so long for.

_You’re nothing._

“You’re Grant Ward, agent of SHIELD.”

 

\---

 

Agent of what? No one ever told him. SHIELD ( _Strategic Homeland Intervention and Logistics Division_ , he could recite in his sleep but he doesn’t know what it _means_ ) is an espionage organisation infiltrated by Hydra, a remnant of a Nazi organisation from World War Two.

He is given books and books of history, to read, to own, to call his own.

Years upon years of history to acquaint himself with, some of it feels familiar but some isn’t.

The banging in his gets louder, a cacophony of throbbing pain and words unspoken.

It gets so bad that he doesn’t even notice when they enter his room and incapacitate him.

He considers yelling ( _help me, Grant_ ) but it wouldn’t do any good. His room is soundproof, the noise would only echo harshly and hurt him more.

Blood and burning pain, white hot and sharp, throbbing and throbbing.

He hopes he hasn’t let down the Director, hasn’t failed his mission.

He didn’t mean to, if he did. It means another treatment, another round of pain worse than this.

Warbled voices echo.

_“Have you retrieved the asset?”_

_“Yes, ma’am.”_

_“Rendezvous in 45 minutes, soldier.”_

He thinks he knows that voice, that slick and excited voice.

He should. He should.

He doesn’t understand anything anymore, his mind is fuzzy and they’ve dragged him away from his bunk.

If he wasn’t so tired he would have waved goodbye.

_Goodbye, cell._

_Goodbye, bed._

Goodbye, Grant.

 

\---

 

He wakes up on a table that’s not different to the one he’s on after his treatments. His arms and legs are bound in leather. Everything is foggy and he blinks slowly, trying to wake himself up. There’s a smiling woman, in a pretty flower dress standing with people. She smiles at him and he stares.

Where is he?

“I’m glad you’re awake, Grant. It will be much easier to perform this operation when you’re awake.”

He can’t move so he stares.

There’s a tugging at the back of his head and if he could move he would squirm.

“Sh, sh, it’s okay. You’re home now, where you’re supposed to be.”

The woman in the flower dress smiles and reaches over to move something off his face.

“We’ll take away all those doubts, wont we? The pain and confusion will stop. You’ll be free.”

The tugging is stronger on the back of his head and there’s a squelching noise.

He’d be screaming if he still had a voice.

_Help me, Grant._

Help me.


End file.
